gain

ok first thing’s first before I forget, I collaborated with a book that has been recently published to kindle, Quick Paleo Meal Prep. And want some HONEST input. If I gift you the book will you post an HONEST review, it’s a bit more professional/technical writing. But if you could help me out then just leave a comment with your email (I’ll delete it as soon as I get it to avoid creepers). BACK TO BUSINESS

I decided to get a friend to video my squat to see if there were any technique issues I needed to workout. In short, I pretty much hung up lifting for about two weeks. Between the rounding of upper back and butt winking (when your lower back curves), and the knees diving in, I basically looked like hammered dog poo in the bottom of my squat. This is especially rough for me since I’ve worked my way from a 285 one rep max, to 305 for somewhat easy working sets. All at a body weight of 173 lbs., but here we go. SO WHAT TO DO?

Well after crying in a dark room for a few hours and eating my feelings, I came back to the gym with a goal to fix me. I started by subscribing to the Crossfit journal (only $30/year I think), and watched every video by jelly starrett that I could on fixing these issues. I started with ankle mobility and worked my way up. It’s challenging to not go all out on stretches. After all, you see him glide in and out of these positions that I’m shaking and panting in like an uncontrollable furbie doll (aging myself with that reference). THE PROGRESS

I’ve mobilized the nasty tissue and now I’m strengthening the muscles that are probably on par with a 5th graders at this point. However the form though is looking much better, and I feel more solid in the bottom of the squat. So that’s a plus! It’s going to be a long journey back to the top, but I’m confident that it’ll be a higher peak once I get there! YOUR CHALLENGE
Video an exercise you enjoy and compare it to a professional with their technique. Analyze what they’re doing that you’re not, and how you can get better.

Too many times in life we accept ourselves as someone with nothing to offer. We have things that we know, but shrink ourselves so as to not stand out. Nothing could be further from the truth! YOU KNOW IT ALL

Not in the literal sense of knowing everything, but your life has afforded you the unique experiences to grant you knowledge in different areas. You may have grown up in an area that is filled with wealth, therefore you have the inate knowledge of sophisticated living that others couldn’t attain through years of study. The opposite is just as true, you could have bee so poor that you learned to appreciate life in it’s most simple elements. Either way, you and your experiences MATTER!YOU HOLD THE KEY

There are things that you have a passion for that no one else does. You’ve taken the time to learn and grow your knowledge in this area, and that is an invaluable resource! Whether it’s fashion, investing, history or door knob shining, you hold the key to that information. Without people like you this world would be filled with the same person multiplied hundreds of thousands of times. It would be LAME! So thank you for your interest and passions. YOU EARNED IT!

I wanted to share this with you because I was involved (hopefully we have more content headed your way!) with the writing of a short kindle book “Quick Paleo Meal Prep“. It’s in the Amazon kindle store, just search the title and it’s either free or .99. But after it was done I couldn’t help but realize that if it weren’t for two people being passionate about something, things and information would never be shared like that. So anyway, you’re special and I support you! YOUR CHALLENGE
Find an area of your life that you’ve excelled in and take a moment to realize the joy it’s brought you. Also how that knowledge has been able to affect others lives.

Yea that paleo thing is fine if you wanna loose weight or stay lean, but I wanna get JACKED! If I had a nickle for every time I heard this I’d have a lot of nickles. “Paleo” isn’t just a diet that people go on to loose weight, it’s a lifestyle. WHAT IS A DIET?

A diet is a short term way of eating that restricts calories to promote weight loss. There is certainly emphasis on the “short” term. Most people get to where they want to be and then go off the rails in a big way, gain all the weight back, and start the cycle over again in a year when they’re heavier than the last year. It’s a cycle that 80% of people subscribe to and accept. PALEO FOR WEIGHT GAIN

So if a diet is a restriction of calories then weight gain is a surplus right? YUP, true you’ll need to eat more, volume wise, if you’re focusing on paleo, but your gains will have much more quality! So how I did it was about as simple as it gets. I ate balanced portions to total higher than average calories per day, but after my workouts I would have about a pound of mashed sweet potato and two cups of ground beef (fat drained). WHY DOES THIS WORK?

Because that’s the only time your body is willing to shuttle nutrients focused on muscle growth! Your muscle size is almost dead last on your bodies priority list, so when it’s been pushed to the limit or close, that’s when you need to cram all the QUALITY food in you can. Do a little home research on the glut4 compound and how it aids in muscle growth, you’ll be glad you did. For now you need to focus on totaling up how many calories you need to gain weight (300-400 over normal per day), and make that post workout meal as big as you can stomach without throwing up your gainz. Don’t factor in the post workout as your daily expenditure, as your body will put those foods to use ASAP. YOUR CHALLENGE

If your goal is weight gain then put this to the test. However if you’re focused on weight loss I would still add the post workout meal in there, just a whole lot smaller. This helps your body restore glucose stores after intense workouts and gets rid of the shakes of you’re training on a deficit. Again these calories basically don’t count if you put in a high quality workout, cause your body will put them to use right away.

You have been maintaning a paleo diet for six days, nothing but the paleo all day every day. And then God said “let there be calories!”, and there were and they were good…soooo good :P.

HOW IT WENT DOWN

My Saturday began just as any other would, eggs with spinach and black beans in the morning (kept under 450 calories), but then something changed. I drove to Waffle House at 8am, and before I went in I downed 6 oz. of grapefruit juice (to reduce insulin spike and promote fast passing). Then I walked in and ordered the all star breakfast with an extra waffle (two eggs, two sausage, hash browns, toast and a waffle). After I ordered I went to the bathroom and did 60-90 sec. Of high intensity cardio. I came back and squeezed lime juice into my water (reduce insulin spike further), and proceeded to gorge myself for the next 10 min. syrup flowing and smiles all around!

CAN YOU EAT MCDONALDS ON CHEAT DAY?

I’m not sure if you “can”, but I did. Yup, two quarter pounder delux with cheese! This was the point where I didn’t want to look at myself for about 3 hours. Luckily we were on a road trip to Baton Rouge, so I sat in the back and questioned if I was going to live or not. But then we arrived…

HOW MANY CRAWFISH CAN YOU EAT?

6 lbs. after a big plate of dip and fruit, the dip must have been a Paula Dean recipe due to the pools of butter at the edges of the dish. After I push away from the table I smell something in the air….CAKE!! Suddenly I find room for two large pieces of chocolate and strawberry cake. At this point I’m not sure if I’m over-doing it, but I like to push the limits so let’s go!

WHO WANTS CRACKER BARREL?

I questioned my future after saying I would go, but my friend who was allergic to most of the food served was hungry and wanted a dinner buddy. So we saunter over to the barrel, and wanting to test my bodies limits, I order the chicken fried steak with two orders of mashed potatoes and green beans (after the plate of cornbread and apple butter). I was half way through my plate and was seeing spots so I decided to live to gorge another day. We waddle back to the hotel, and hugging my belly I roll into bed and pray I wake up tomorrow.

DID I GAIN ALL THE WEIGHT BACK??

Nope, I weighed 174.6 lbs. Friday, weighing Monday morning I was a bloated 175.3 lbs. just one pound over where I started. So all in all I would say that cheat day was a success and I look forward to next Saturday already :)) just FYI as well, I lost 4.6 lbs. that first week on this regimen.

Your challenge: starting today, even if you’ve downed a few donuts already, start the paleo diet with the intention of pigging out Saturday to restart your body. It’s amazing!!

It’s Friday!! That means that tomorrow (and a little Sunday) is my day to go as wild as I want with my food, and I don’t even feel bad about it! No one can do the same thing over and over day in and day out, we just aren’t wired that way. So I encourage you to think as you read over this about what areas in your life you’re not giving the propper amout of rest to.

12,000 Calorie Day

That’s my goal every Saturday, and even though I never hit it, I satisfy every craving I had during the week. If you are following the Paleo Diet for weight loss, it’s reasonable to assume that you’re dramatically underfed most days. So balance this out with at least one day of the nastiest cheating you can stomach! This will not only fix the cravings, bring you to a reasonable amount of calories and bring you back mentally; this will reset your body to burn fat faster in the next week! That’s right, eating like a pig for one day has the potential to reset your body and enhance the fat shreddage!

GO NUTS…responsibly

I know after all of that you’re wanting to schedule your cheat day ASAP, wake up and dive headfirst into the tallest stack of panckakes you can find for breakfast, but let’s pump the breaks first. You need to set your body up to succeed on these days. Not only is this going to shock your metabolism, but your digestive track will be the primary casualty if you don’t take the necessary steps. First start the day with 40 grams of protein, some small beans and caffine on an empty stomach, this will boost metabolism and start your tummy off easy. Then before the first encounter with the enemy, drink 6 oz. of grapejuice to minimize the insulin spike for the rest of the day. Follow this with 16 oz. Herbamate tea, cooled to room temp., before every meal thereafter. This will promote fast exportation of whatever you put in, all the goodies with out the baggage!!

One Last Thing

And this could mean the difference between success and failure on these days. Imediately prior to every meal after the breakfast do 60-90 sec. of intense exercise, preferably out of sight and not at the table. This will open the glucose pathways to muscle that has been stimulated, that way the calories can go to a good cause, the swole patrol :). If you are diciplined enough to follow a mostly paleo diet for 6 days this shouldn’t be close to an issue, unless you’re a weenie, you’re no weenie are you??

We’ve all seen them in the gym, frosted protein shake in hand, without it they probably wouldn’t be here. They hustle towards the weight rack, blaring jams to grind through their 20 sets of 8-12 reps. With a grunt of satisfaction they pump out the last rep and down the protein cocktail they put all their trust in… Cool story bro.

WHY DO WE DO THIS??

Why is it held as “common knowledge” that this is the ritual that we are to follow to have a successful workout? Why the powder instead of the real thing? I believe it’s mostly due to marketing and the lack of willingness to believe that maybe re supplement industry doesn’t have our best internet in mind (but that’s just me). Or maybe it’s because you had such a hard workout that you need the hydro isolate anabolic homeostatic protein to make it to your ripped muscles so fast because you might loose your gainzzzzz….no.

DID YOU REALLY WORKOUT HARD?

If so then you would have opened your muscles glucose receptor stores and anything you put in will be shuttled to the needy parts. This is of course assuming you did have an intense session and not just a jaw grinder with the bros. So put the food in that you need! The truth is that once you tax the body to the point of needing to grow new muscle the only things the muscles need aren’t JUST protein. It needs nutrients only found in whole foods. Carbs, proteins and fats to restore and improve what you’ve broken.

THE ANSWER

After every workout I have I have a pre prepped meal of one large sweet potato and a cup and a half of ground beef with the fat drained in hot water. This will satisfy every need the muscles could have if ingested right after workout. Also you get all the benefits of the post workout without the major insulin spike! And since insulin causes fat storage, you’ll get all the gainz without the fluff, or roughly 75% muscle and 25% added weight. But this ratio is better than the 3 times average dose of sugar in most protein shakes which basically undoes all the work you put in to lean out!

SO USE THIS AND GROW!

Hope this helps and let me know if you get the same benefits or have other advice in the comments 🙂

It’s tax refund season! You know what that means, the government took your money that you earned for a whole year, and now has decided to let you have it back, interest free! Wow they really are looking out for us aren’t they… Not really.

YES IT IS A REFUND

Everyone gets so excited every year to get THEIR money back, it blows my mind when people come up to me asking how much I got back. Then we compare amounts, and when they find out that most of the time I had to pay the government money they look at me like I’ve made a horrible mistake. But let’s think about this, I changed my withholdings to keep the maximum amounts. That means that I can put what I would have had taken out in taxes into a fund of some kind, then when it comes time to pay uncle sam the NECESSARY AMOUNT (no more no less!), I take it out of the fund and use the interest gained as a cushion to be compounded every year. So in the end this person fought tooth and nail to get whatever money they could back, looking in every loophole and tax bracket they could. While I literally made money on the money every year, and never had to worry about paying too much. Sounds like a win to me…

WHAT TO DO WITH THE REFUND?

Well you can go out and get that new tv you’ve been wanting, that new gaming system or a down payment on a car you can barely afford. But what do all of these things have in common, they’re liabilities! A liability is something that you spend money on, then you spend money on and keep spending money on it, the liability never yields anything of value to you! Instead how about you take time on the internet to invest in something that will actually help, go to a seminar on how to start a business online, look into real-estate. I wouldn’t recommend buying stocks though, I did that one year and it was a lesson well learned, it takes much more thought and consideration than buying something that will give you knowledge or income.

START A NEW HABBIT

Look at things you buy from now on as an asset (money maker) or a liability (money taker). Learning and applying these two words will yield incredible returns in most areas of your life! And the sooner you can fix your taxes to change the withholdings to keep the money that’s YOURS, the better. Just go to your HR person and ask to have your withholdings done so that you keep the maximum, this is easiest if you’re on a salary because you can look at your taxes from last year and just invest that amount monthly. Then just sit back and enjoy the interest earned and knowledge applied 🙂